Biggest pet peeves on builds.

[espo]

I always seem to have to do a lot of sanding and fitting to get the two halves of the engine block and transmission to line up before I can even think about adding the heads. I use NOBLNG's intake manifold method to get the heads properly  mounted to the block. Model building companies devote a majority of their attention to the fit and finish of the body and interior parts but seem indifferent to the chassis and engine parts. 

[Jordan White]

11 hours ago, NOBLNG said:

HEADS! Why can’t the kit manufacturers give us some proper locating pins on the heads instead of just some vague bumps. I always have to use the intake manifold as a gauge to get their positions correct. Usually I will wrap an elastic band around the four pieces to hold them until I can get the heads glued. I often don’t want to paint the manifold with the engine, and I don’t want to accidentally glue it in place either. 

How about locating pins in general? Obviously they can't do much about older kits, but newer kits still seem to have issues with some mounting points not being clear enough. A big one also seems to be body parts/bumpers/mirrors where you know the general spot, but you basically have to make your own locating pieces to get the parts to sit right.

[Rbray47]

On 3/31/2020 at 10:51 AM, NOBLNG said:

I have gone up under the dash and yanked that annoying buzzer right out!

My Jeep has a pressure switch under the seat. It got unplugged on day one. 

[Tom Geiger]

I drill off the kit provided mounting pins, drill the parts and use straight pins to assemble nearly everything. 

And as mentioned, prefitting and sanding mount surfaces flat helps a great deal.

[Snake45]

Engine parts can never be "square" as in 1:1 due to the draft angles required for injection molding. 

On the rare occasion now when I do put an engine in a model, I actually enjoy filing and fitting the block, heads, pan, and intake manifold to get a perfect fit. Often the very first step is to block-sand the engine block halves till they fit flush with each other, then just hit 'em with liquid cement. Cleaning up the resulting glue seam when it dries is quick and easy. And so on. A FLAT file is your friend on engine assembly. 

[espo]

I'm a little surprised by the number of members here that don't seem to appreciate the seat belts in their vehicles. I don't wish anyone to have an accident but wonder how many of the nonusers have been in an accident and not wearing they seat belts, how did that end for you ? Think about it a moment. Your car and your body in the car are moving forward at say 50 mph. The car strikes a fixed object and suddenly stops. Your body is still going 50 mph when you hit the steering wheel, dash board, and whatever else there is between you and the windshield. Something like this might change your mind about seatbelt usage, and it might even be brought about by someone else who is doing whatever in stead of driving. I had a similar experience once during my misspent youth and hit a tree that didn't use the cross walk. The steering wheel was able to absorb most of my impact with a great deal of pain but my head still managed to get in contact with the windshield. This was a head ache like non I had ever experienced and fortunately it only took a half a dozen stitches to get my forehead back together. I wasn't going 50 mph and the tree only made it a third of the way into the hood and dislodged the engine from its mountings. Totaled car and almost myself. This may explain why I personally appreciate seat belts and air bags and such. 

[Snake45]

I'm not against seat belt usage. Use em all the time myself. I'm just against displaying them in a completely unrealistic way in a model.

BTW, seat belts are a Major Big Deal over in Model Airplane World. Hard to believe the amount of effort and worry some guys spend getting just exactly the right kind of seat belts into little plastic airplanes. There's even a special exemption in IPMS Out of the Box rules, which are quite strict, to allow adding seat belts made of paper or tape to an otherwise OOB build. 

[Roadrunner]

One of my biggest peeves here of late, is finding what I like in the way of wheels, then combining them with some corresponding tires that don't look like they belong on farm machinery. I must have 80 tires here, or more, and almost all of them are worthless.

[StevenGuthmiller]

18 minutes ago, Snake45 said:

I'm not against seat belt usage. Use em all the time myself. I'm just against displaying them in a completely unrealistic way in a model

Exactly.

The first thing I do when I get into a vehicle today is buckle up.

But that's not what we're talking about here.

Most of the models we are seeing on the board are older vehicles, and let's face it, like it or not, most people back in the 50s, 60s and 70s were not using their seat belts.

If they weren't going to wear them, they surely were not going to lay them neatly across the seat when they exited the vehicle.

stuffed right into the seat crack they would go!

 

 

 

Steve

[ChrisBcritter]

Re fixing the fit on engine parts: Shoot, I expect to do that with these old kits - Tamiya isn't going to make a '60 Ford pickup, and I'll probably be too old to build by the time Moebius gets around to it, so...

Edited April 2, 2020 by ChrisBcritter

[Jordan White]

1 hour ago, Roadrunner said:

One of my biggest peeves here of late, is finding what I like in the way of wheels, then combining them with some corresponding tires that don't look like they belong on farm machinery. I must have 80 tires here, or more, and almost all of them are worthless.

I feel the same way, find the right wheels, but can't find the right tires! It seems like for me for 4x4 tires, they are either too small or too large (or just the ugly Goodyear Tracker A-Ts that are found in every Revell/Monogram 4x4 kit) and so I get to go buy yet another aftermarket set...granted this isn't entirely bad since I generally prefer aftermarket tires anyways!

[Brudda]

On 12/3/2019 at 8:33 PM, Modelbuilder Mark said:

For me, it is also misplaced seems, which is also my least favorite aspect of the hobby.

Now, I'm not just talking about the seems on other folks finished projects, nope, I'm talking about the fact that there are SOOO many kits over the years, that seem have have had little to no thought as to where the seems would end up, and at times, I think they TRIED to put them in a bad place for chrome. I end up spending a very large portion of my build time, simply cleaning up those ill placed lines, stripping chrome from countless bumpers etc. Like engine block halves with the molded oil pan, C'mon!

Many of the more modern kits seem to be getting better about placements.

 

Seam lines on chrome bumpers. !!!!

[Modelbuilder Mark]

58 minutes ago, Brudda said:

Seam lines on chrome bumpers. !!!!

Exactly ?